


if it's me you're looking for

by eleadore



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drunken Confessions, In Vino Veritas, M/M, Romance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 05:37:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleadore/pseuds/eleadore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis has a bad habit of getting drunk before he confesses--or maybe it's the other way around. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if it's me you're looking for

**Author's Note:**

> for the in vino veritas square on my trope bingo. thanks to [maggie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/marguerite_26/pseuds/marguerite_26) for talking me down from the tree. ...repeatedly.

“Having a good time?”

He’s drunk and at the center of everyone’s attention; Louis should, by all means, be having a fantastic time. 

“Fantastic,” he says, and Dan’s face lights up. He’s got a bit of sauce at the corner of his mouth, but it doesn’t taste like anything when Louis leans in to kiss it away. “You didn’t have to do all of this, you know.”

“I wanted to,” Dan says softly. “I know you didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but it is a big deal. It’s huge. I wanted us to celebrate.” 

Louis doesn’t say he would’ve rather celebrated over a bottle of wine back at his flat, because Dan wouldn’t believe him, and it’s not true, anyway. He lives for crowds—the heat and noise and fast, distracted conversations, and he doesn’t know how to explain why he’s not feeling it today, why the crush of friendly faces feels suffocating and every drink settles sour at the back of his throat. 

He could try, but it’s easier to knock back the last of it and smile. “Well, thanks. But honestly, let them pay for their own bloody drinks.”

Dan laughs and leans down to kiss him, quick and wet. “Would you let me pay for yours?”

“I’d be outraged if you didn’t,” Louis tells him, and gets another kiss for his cheek. He leans into it before he leans away. “Surprise me. Nothing fruity.” 

There’s a line at the bar, but Dan gets waylaid before he’s even reached it by someone Louis might have recognized, a few drinks ago. It feels as if Dan’s gone and invited everyone Louis has ever exchanged hellos with, and it’s the sort of grand gesture that should make him weak at the knees. It’s thoughtful. Romantic, even.

Louis could really use another drink.

“Hi.”

The way it’s drawled makes it sound like three words instead of one. Louis’ stomach swoops as he turns and meets sleepy eyes with a scowl.

“Who the fuck invited you?”

Harry grins. “I’m crashing the party, mate.”

If Louis had something besides the frayed hem of his t-shirt to keep his hands occupied, he wouldn’t reach up and brush the curls out of Harry’s eyes. But he hasn’t, so he does, and Harry blinks languidly, sways in until they’re fit together like pieces out of different puzzles, their edges worn. 

Louis could hook his chin over Harry’s shoulder if he wanted to, wrap him up in a proper hug, but it’s instinct to lean in just until their cheeks brush and Harry’s mouth is at his ear, their hands caught between their bodies. Harry’s fingers clinch around his wrist and Louis breathes to the slow, rhythmic press of Harry’s thumb at the center of his palm.

“You smell like girl.”

“You like it?”

“Fuck, no. Please don’t go bathing in lavender ever again.” 

“It’s not that bad,” Harry huffs, and it’s not—kind of nice, really, but if you give Harry an inch, he’ll take a mile and Louis will end up haunted by sweet floral scents for the rest of his life. He learned his lesson with the fedora, and learned it well. “I’m supposed to layer it with something lighter. Like, something powdery.”

“Whatever that means.” Louis pulls back just enough to look at him and match the lopsided curve of his mouth. His hair’s a fucking mess, and not the artful, tousled mess he makes of it; someone’s been playing with it, and they’ve left him looking like he’s just given some brilliant head. “’s that where you’ve been all evening, then? Letting strange girls spray you with their… perfume?”

Harry laughs and Louis can’t bite back his grin, so he looks away. His palm tingles. 

“What can I say? I’m very popular.”

“Oh, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Harry says, and the way he talks, sometimes. There’s a whole another conversation wrapped up in that one breath. He digs his thumb in, just gently. “They liked my cologne.”

Louis looks at him and thinks that’s not all they liked. “ _My_ cologne. That you stole from me.”

“Rescued,” Harry shoots back, “from the nuclear warzone that passes for your bedroom. You’ve got chocolate all over your pillows, by the way, and the covers were in the laundry so now you’re really fucked.”

“Piss off,” Louis says, “I’m not coming home tonight anyway.” 

Their eyes meet and Louis finds himself holding his breath for—something. But Harry just smiles, slow and sweet. “Yeah? Has Dan got something special planned? Dunno how he could top this.”

“Oh, shut up,” Louis says, because he’s known Harry too well and for too long not to recognize the mocking drag of his voice. “ _I’ve_ got plans to thank him, if you must know. Thoroughly and at great length.” 

Harry nods solemnly. “Well, that explains why you’ve been drinking for two.”

Louis laughs loud enough to startle himself and slaps a hand over his mouth. Harry’s dimpling, gone flushed the way he gets when he’s said something he’d regret if it weren’t for the fact that it made Louis laugh. 

“You’re a right twat, you know that? Showing up uninvited and taking all kinds of jabs at my boy.” Louis watches Harry open his mouth, and then close it, settle for wrinkling his nose. A few years ago, he would have said it. _I’m your boy._ Louis clears his throat. “And you haven’t even bothered to congratulate me yet.”

Harry rolls his eyes and his thumb presses in. Releases. They’ve shifted close again, so close it feels odd not to hook his arms around Harry’s shoulders, nose into his curls. 

“Congrats,” Harry says, “I heard you’ve been promoted from an awful desk job you hated to an awful desk job that pays a little better. Which doesn’t really matter, because you’ll still hate it.” 

Louis laughs softly and feels lighter than he has all day. “Well, we can’t all be living the dream.”

“Yes, we can,” Harry says, stubborn as ever, and Louis curls his hand around his thumb so they’re holding each other. 

“Don’t start,” Louis says quietly. “I think I’m stuck here, Haz. I think I might end up doing this for the rest of my life. And some days that doesn’t sound so—”

“Harry!” 

They both jolt, and for a second Harry squeezes his hand hard enough to make Louis wince. He makes a protesting noise when Louis pulls away, but there’s a group of girls waving him down from behind the bar. Louis realizes he knows them from work and feels inexplicably flustered, like he’s been caught at something. 

“Your fanclub’s found you,” he says, fixing his clothes and avoiding Harry’s eyes. He can still feel the steady, phantom pressure against his palm; knows he’ll be feeling it for the rest of the night. “And I should go find Dan.”

“Louis,” Harry starts, but Louis cuts him off with a look.

“I’m not going to—it’s my party, for fuck’s sake. I’m going to get another drink, and then I’m going to forget about all the—the whatever, and I’m going to enjoy myself. All right?”

Harry stares him down for as long as it takes for Louis to firm his mouth, and then he looks away. The girls are still calling him, saying something about patchouli, and Harry smiles and waves back. 

“We’re going to talk tomorrow,” he says, like he’s ever been able to make Louis do something he doesn’t want to, and heads off before Louis can scoff at him. He’s the single easiest person to track through a crowd, with his curly head and the awkward shuffle he does so he doesn’t step on anyone’s feet, and Louis watches him go despite himself, feeling a little cold and far too sober. 

There’s something he can do about that, at least.

* * *

Louis wakes up alone and completely wrecked.

He’s so sore that trying to get out of bed has him gritting his teeth and gasping a little. His head’s throbbing and his mouth’s dry, tastes fucking vile. He doesn’t feel like throwing up, but has this awful suspicion that’s because he spent a good chunk of time last night doing just that.

The bed’s cold and smells overwhelmingly of stale sex. His arse twinges like he went a few rounds with a porn star and there’s smudgy fingerprint bruises littered all over his body. He remembers wanting it rough but doesn’t remember asking for it—hopes he didn’t beg, but judging by how shitfaced he was, it’s fair to say he probably did. 

The thought makes him groan and flop back onto the bed, pull the sheets over his head. It does nothing to ease the frankly insulting amount of sunlight the room’s flooded with, and Louis takes his time cursing Dan’s big bay windows and the beautiful, unobstructed view. His room back at the flat is an actual cave by comparison, cramped and dark even in the middle of the afternoon, but Louis loves it that way. His bed’s a single, must not be even half the size of the mammoth he’s currently sprawled in, but it’s never robbed him of a good night’s sleep or the will to live, which is more than he can currently say.

“Fuck me,” he whines into the pillow, and retches at the smell of his own breath before heaving himself up. “Dan? Dan! You here?”

There’s no response, and no cute little post-it note on the bedside table telling him where Dan’s gone off to. Louis kicks off the sheets and tries to remember what day it is and, when that fails, where he’s left his trousers.

He finds them wrapped around the floor lamp in the hall and suspiciously stained, which he doesn’t think about as he fishes his mobile out of the pocket. It turns out to be a Saturday, and he has a handful of missed calls and unread messages, but nothing important. Nothing from Harry.

“Wanker,” Louis mutters, and sends: _come pick me up. wanker_

He’s nearly found all of his clothes by the time he gets a reply.

_nice night?_

_maybe,_ Louis sends. _blackout_

_z said you left early_

Louis doesn’t remember that. He doesn’t even remember talking to Zayn, beyond the cursory, “you’re so beyond fashionably late,” and Zayn’s entirely inappropriate reply of, “you’re so beyond charmingly inebriated,” but then that’s kind of what blackout fucking means. Louis is tempted to send a proper, scathing reply but it’s too much of a bother to type out, so he sends, instead, _z who_ and hopes it conveys both his contempt as well as his sorry state of being. 

_prick,_ is what he gets back, and it might as well have come with a picture of Harry’s pout. Louis grins all the way to the bathroom, where he takes a piss and washes his face and finger-brushes his mouth, but ultimately decides against a shower. Dan’s bath stuff smells too strongly of chemicals, spicy and what tends to pass for masculine, and it’s a special kind of torture getting back into dirty clothes after you’ve just gotten clean. 

He doesn’t consider staying, and later Louis will wonder why the thought of poking through Dan’s drawers and putting on his clothes and waiting for him to come home never even crossed his mind, but for now he squeezes into his disgusting trousers and shrugs on his equally disgusting t-shirt and makes for the door. He calls Dan as he lets himself out, and ends up leaving a voicemail. 

“Hey, babe,” he says, mobile held against his shoulder while he struggles with the double lock. It’s a gated community in a safe neighborhood, but Louis has felt the furious itch of responsibility ever since Dan handed him the keys he never asked for. “I’ve gotta run home but I had—ah, fuck, this fucking—no, I had a great time and you were just brilliant, and thank you for everything, again—and I’ll call you tonight? Oh, and, um, I’ve left my pants somewhere so if you find them—”

The tone cuts him off.

“Fuck it,” Louis sighs, but the lock, at least, has begun to cooperate, and he’s down two flights of stairs before his phone begins to buzz and he runs headfirst into someone as he tries to get it out of his pocket.

“Shit, sorry—oh, hey, babe!” He laughs as he regains his balance, and stretches to kiss Dan hello, keeps it quick and soft. “I just called you, like, two seconds ago.” 

“I didn’t take my mobile,” Dan says, and he sounds rough and looks rougher, like he hasn’t slept at all. Louis ignores the insistent vibration of his phone to look him over more carefully, from his greasy hair and red rimmed eyes to the pack of fags he’s got clutched in his hand. 

“You went out to get those?” Louis cocks his head, bemused. “But—I thought you were quitting.”

“Yeah,” Dan says, “so did I.”

Louis can’t read the look on Dan’s face at all, and doesn’t know what to make of the flat tone of his voice. “Right. Is everything all right? I mean, are you?” 

“Yeah,” Dan says, “yeah, I’m fine. More worried about you, really.” 

“Me?” Louis laughs and runs a hand over his face, a little self-conscious. “I know I look a mess, but—”

“No, you know,” Dan says, “you had a rough night.”

Something like awareness makes the back of Louis’ neck prickle. “Right. Well, this is embarrassing, but it’s all, uh, a bit of a blur, to be honest.” Louis’ phone starts buzzing again, but Dan’s silent and Louis doesn’t think he’s ever looked at him this way before. “Dan, I—look, if I did something stupid, just—”

“You told me you loved me.”

“Oh,” Louis manages, frantically thinking of some way to spin this that doesn’t end in him coming off a complete knob, because _I was really, really, very drunk,_ is the only thing crossing his mind at the moment, but then Dan says,

“You kept calling me Harry,” and everything, absolutely everything, grinds to a complete halt.

Louis is a good liar, and he’s a fucking exceptional actor. He’s gotten himself out of scrapes worse than this with nothing more than a smile and a shrug, but right now, for the life of him, he can’t even remember how to breathe. 

“I thought it was a joke at first,” Dan says, and huffs a little like he’s just figured out the punchline. “You were pissed and climbing all over me and I thought—but you weren’t laughing. Christ, you wouldn’t fucking shut up.” He looks at Louis like he’s waiting for something. “And now you’ve got nothing to say.”

Louis’ mouth has gone dry. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know, Louis. How about an explanation? Do you think you could manage that? Could you at least fucking tell me that I wasn’t some—some kind of replacement for him?”

“You weren’t his replacement,” Louis echoes, and knows before he even opens his mouth that it’s going to come out sounding like, _he can’t be replaced._

“Fuck,” Dan says, “is that—have you been cheating on me?”

“No,” Louis says, trying to keep his voice steady. He can’t quite hear himself over the rush of blood in his ears. “No, we’re not—I wouldn’t do that to you. It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like? What was it, some kind of elaborate fantasy? Does your best friend know you fuck other people and pretend it’s him?” Louis flinches and Dan laughs shortly, disbelieving, at whatever he sees on his face. “Bloody hell, Louis. You’re pathetic.”

The jangle of keys and a cheerful voice precedes the lady that comes up the stairs. Her hands are full and they’re blocking the stairwell; Louis should move out of the way, but he can’t really focus on anything beyond Dan’s flushed, furious face, and the fear that’s started gnawing at his gut. 

“Are you going to tell him?”

Dan shakes his head slowly, like Louis is utterly beyond him. “Unbelievable. All of this and he’s still the only thing you care about. What about us? Did that mean anything, or have the past four months been a fucking game to you? Because I wasn’t playing, do you understand? I was serious. I lo—I, I was.” 

Louis’ throat closes up. “Dan—“

Dan throws his arm out to cut him off, mouth pressed into a thin, white line. “It’s like I wasn’t even there for you. You didn’t see me. Did you, ever?”

“Are you going to give me a chance to—”

_”Did you?”_

“Hey,” comes a voice, and Louis’ heart nearly seizes in his chest. “Louis.”

Harry looks like he just rolled out of bed, hair wild and clothes rumpled. But his eyes, when Louis meets them over Dan’s shoulder, are clear.

“I was waiting outside. Been calling you,” he says, and Louis’ hand goes to his pocket, where his phone’s finally stopped vibrating. Harry’s eyes cut from Louis to Dan’s tense shoulders and back again. “Hey, mate. Everything all right?”

“Hey, yeah,” Dan says, but he’s not looking at Harry, and Louis thinks, no, no, please don’t. “I’m good, just, you know. Trying to wrap my head around how my boyfriend screams your name when he comes.”

Louis doesn’t close his eyes, but he wants to. For a second it feels like he’s apart from this, watching it happen to someone else; the heat flooding his face isn’t real, and neither are Harry’s bright, cautious eyes. He feels the sudden, horrifying urge to laugh, but when he opens his mouth what comes out is, 

“Ex. Ex-boyfriend.” 

Dan’s face is some twisted cocktail of furious and devastated, but Louis would let him have the satisfaction in a universe that doesn’t exist. He doesn’t know how long they stare each other down, but it feels a bit like working something until it frays. There’s no stretch and no snap; just a silent dissolution that arrives on the heel of Harry’s voice.

“Lou.” There are long, familiar fingers wrapping around his wrist. “Come on.”

Dan’s in the way, and when he moves back he knocks into Harry too roughly to be an accident. Louis tenses, heart still somewhere in his throat, and nearly gives into the urge to pull Harry behind him. He doesn’t think Dan’s violent, but then Louis hadn’t thought he was vindictive either, so really, what does he know. 

But the moment passes, and none of them move, and then Harry says, “excuse me,” polite like Dan’s a stranger he’s accidentally trod on, and tugs Louis down the stairs and out the door. 

Louis doesn’t look back.

* * *

“Harry.” 

The radio’s counting down top 80s pop songs, and maybe having Nena as a soundtrack wouldn’t benefit this conversation, but Louis hates the waiting game. Harry hasn’t taken his eyes off the road once, not even to return any of Louis’ sneaky glances, and they’re still long minutes from home. Any more of this and he’s going to squirm out of his skin.

He taps his fingers against the dash and wishes Harry would grab his hand and make him stop. “Would you say something?”

They’ve just pulled up to the kerb outside a dingy little café. Harry hums. “D’you want anything?”

_”Harry.”_

“Louis,” Harry says, and looks at him. “Are you still in love with me?”

His eyes turn grey, sometimes, in the sunlight. Today they’re green.

“Just get me the regular, ta,” Louis mumbles, and gets his mobile out before Harry’s even shut the door, sends one, frantic text to the only three people he can be bothered with. 

_might have done something foolish_

The replies come within seconds of each other, just as Harry’s sliding back into the car, coffee in hand.

 _DONT SAY THAT_

_tell me over lunch? your treat_

_should I act surprised?_

Louis takes his drink and chooses to silently, viciously burn his tongue. 

* * *

He doesn’t run for the shower as soon as they’re home, but it’s a near thing. Their flat could moonlight as someone’s closet, and the bathroom’s the only room with a lock on the door; Louis doesn’t plan to avoid Harry forever, of course, because he would eventually become hungry, but there’s something to be said for sitting in the tub under scalding hot water and feeling right sorry for yourself.

By the time the water’s lukewarm, he’s managed to get to his feet and scrub himself down, using the last of Harry’s body wash out of spite. He counts the bruises as he goes and tries to feel more miserable than he does—here’s another relationship come to an end, and in the most spectacularly humiliating way thus far, but all Louis can think about is how Harry looked at him just then, like all the answers to every question he’d never asked were written on Louis’ face.

His fingertips have begun to prune. Louis hates that.

“Pathetic,” he says, but the water drowns him out.

* * *

Harry’s sat on the sofa when Louis decides to leave the sanctuary of the bath, phone in one hand and a beautiful, buttery croissant in the other. Louis’ stomach growls, but he’s still got the last few scraps of his pride left, so he stomps over to the kitchen and hopes Harry gets flakes all over the cushions. 

“You could have said something,” Harry says, when Louis starts banging cupboards. 

All Louis can see is the back of his stupid, curly head. For a moment, he debates playing dumb or, better yet, ignoring him entirely, but the temptation to be done with this and move on—or pretend to, which Louis had gotten quite good at—is too strong. 

So he says, “I did,” and takes some frozen peas out of the fridge for no reason at all. “I got shot down, if you’ll remember.”

“I was eighteen,” Harry says mildly, “and you wanted to get married.” 

Louis whirls around to gape at him, outraged. “I never fucking said that!” 

Harry hooks his arm over the back of the sofa and has the gall to raise his eyebrows. “Okay, well. It was pretty heavily implied.” 

“You make it sound like I fucking proposed, which is not what happened.” 

“So what happened?”

There’s a puddle forming around the peas. Louis shoves them into the sink and starts hunting for cereal. “It doesn’t matter, because you said no.”

“It wasn’t _no,_ ” Harry says, annoyance making his voice deeper, “it was _not now._ ”

“Well, it’s fantastic that you expected me to wait on you while you went off and—sowed your wild oats, or whatever, but—“

Harry makes a short noise and gets to his feet, dropping his half-eaten croissant onto the coffee table. 

“That’s not what I said, and you know it.”

“Yes, well, we didn’t say a lot of things,” Louis says, and can’t help the snide twist to his voice when he adds, “but maybe you _implied_ it. Where’s the fucking cereal?” The only cupboards Louis hasn’t checked in are the ones that are too high for him; they have a footstool but Louis refuses to use it and Harry knows that. And how difficult is it to just leave the food—which Louis bought, not to put too fine a point on it—somewhere he can fucking reach, anyway. 

“On the counter,” Harry says, and Louis is about to whirl on him when he sees it, behind the toaster.

“That’s not where it goes,” he snaps, because it isn’t. There’s just enough left for a bowlful and Louis is about to shake it out when Harry sidles up behind him and puts his hands on the counter, cages him in. He smells like coffee and sleep and a bit like lavender, still. 

“Don’t take all of it,” he says, right against Louis’ ear, so Louis turns to scowl at him.

“Are you going to be a cunt about this?” he demands. 

Harry blinks slowly. “If you finish it all, yeah.”

“Don’t act cute,” Louis says. “I don’t want you bringing this up every time we argue—”

“Right,” Harry says, “because I’m the one who does that.” 

Louis talks over him. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d appreciate some maturity, yeah. Now that it’s all—whatever, now that we’ve discussed it, I’d really rather we just move on and forget about this episode entirely.”

“Dunno if I can,” Harry says seriously, and Louis’ insides do this queer little flip. “Seeing as how you’ve left our AVP box set at his place.”

Louis takes a moment to stare before punching him in the side. _”Cunt.”_

Then, as it occurs to him: “Wait, have I really?” Dan had made vague plans for a movie night not too long ago, and Louis had been excited to share his favourites, but he doesn’t think they’d ever gotten around to watching any. “Oh, fuck, I’ll have to go pick up my things. And—I still have his keys.”

“Let’s go wreck the place,” Harry suggests, like he’s ever wrecked anything in his life. “I’ll get the spray paint, you get the bat.” 

Louis bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “That’s a nice thought, curly, but something tells me you’d end up picking up after him instead.”

Harry shrugs and tosses his curls out of his eyes. “No risk, no reward.”

“Shut up.” Louis twists his mouth as a last effort, but Harry’s dimpling up already and fuck, Louis didn’t stand a chance. He ducks his head and smiles at the floor like an idiot until Harry shuffles closer and knocks their feet together.

“Are you going to talk to him?”

Louis curls his toes. “And say what?” 

“Dunno,” Harry says, “just,” and leans in until Louis feels the point of his nose against his jaw, the slow, hot rush of breath. It almost tickles. “You smell like—pomegranate. Did you use up my scrub?” 

“Hm,” Louis says, closing his eyes, “you’ll never be able to prove it.” 

Harry’s hand finds his wrist, and Louis waits for the press of his thumb but gets the softest stroke instead, insistent in a way that Louis wonders at before he remembers the bruises. Harry touches the inside of his elbow, sweeps his fingers across his arm one by one, and Louis shivers.

Says, “I wanted him to.”

“Yeah?” Harry’s hands are warm, but Louis’ skin still prickles. He tries not to wonder what those steady strokes would feel like over the bruises on his hips, on the insides of his thighs; what Harry’s thinking, when he looks at him like that. If he’s wondering the same thing. “You wanted…”

“I like it,” Louis says, and then wishes he hadn’t. They need to stop, but Louis can’t bring himself to move away; just twitches a little in Harry’s grip and says, “Haz, come on, I—I’m hungry.”

“Right,” Harry says, and lets him go, “sorry.” His hair’s falling into his eyes and Louis itches to brush it away. “Don’t, um. Leave the cereal. I got you croissants.” 

“I know,” Louis says, and Harry’s mouth quirks.

“I know you know.” 

And that’s the whole bleeding problem, right there.

* * *

People ask how they met, sometimes, when they mistake them for a couple. Louis is used to taking the piss by now, inventing outrageous meet-cutes just to see how much his earnest eyebrows will let him get away with—at least until Harry elbows him in the side to shut him up and says, _no, he’s just trying to be funny. We met in a bathroom._

Louis can’t ever resist correcting him, and the twitch of his mouth says he knows it, the way his dimples pop when Louis jumps in with, _he’s having you on. Actually, wet met at a concert._

No one ever finds their two-man act quite as amusing as Louis does, but that’s all right, because it always leaves Harry grinning. Louis doesn’t know if he’s remembering the same things—the knock of shoulders in a crowd, more than half a conversation lost to the noise, those eyes, that smile—but the memory is something Louis will carry with him forever, every detail from the feel of Harry’s hand on his wrist to the way Louis fumbled with the phone when he gave him his number.

He saved Harry’s under _curly_ and called him as soon as he got home, tried not to feel crushed when no one picked up and his texts went ignored. He hadn’t been expecting anything, anyway; they didn’t know anything but each other’s names and the fact that they lived miles apart. Louis didn’t forget him, but it was just easier to pretend he had, at least until they ran into each other in a grimy little truck-stop bathroom in the middle of nowhere, months later. 

Harry was on a school field trip. Harry’s hair was just as wild and eyes just as green as Louis remembered. Harry had chugged four cans of Red Bull on a dare and really, _really_ had to go.

Harry had lost his phone at the venue. 

“I don’t even know your surname,” he said, “but I—I hoped I’d run into you again. I had a feeling.”

“Tomlinson,” Louis said, completely dazed, and Harry laughed and made them exchange addresses too, just for good measure. Harry’s changed four months later, when his father’s work got him transferred to the town Louis had lived in for nearly his entire life.

Maybe it’s a good thing they never get around to telling the real story; Louis doesn’t think anyone would believe the way they were thrown together, again and again and again, by coincidence and by design, until one Christmas Eve Louis drank his body weight in liquid courage and fisted a hand in Harry’s stupid curls, hauled him in and said,

“I think I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Things went a bit pear-shaped, after that. In retrospect, Louis might’ve been better off just leaving it to fate. 

* * *

“D’you know the first thing he said to me?”

“’Can I buy you a drink?’”

“No,” Louis says, “well, yes, but. For fuck’s sake, just shut up and let me talk.” 

Zayn looks up from where he’s been aimlessly scribbling on the tabletop and raises his eyebrows. “Go on, then. What’s the second thing he said to you? I’m on tenterhooks.”

Louis grits his teeth and stirs more sugar into his tea. “He asked if he wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes. He thought I was with Harry.”

“Shocking,” Zayn says dryly. “No one saw that coming.”

Louis hadn’t. He’d had a few drinks already and danced off nearly all the buzz, but the way Dan looked at him, like he was something he couldn’t quite believe existed, made Louis light up. There wasn’t any shortage of men aiming to take him home that night—there never was—but Dan looked tall and broad and capable, at least until Louis smiled at him. Then he just looked _flustered,_ and Louis loved it, was more than ready for it, but instead of pulling him back into the crush Dan had nodded at something just over Louis’ shoulder and said, “are you here with someone?” 

“Yeah,” Louis said, flirty and forward, “you,” and Dan flushed and laughed and shook his head. 

“I meant—I saw you with that bloke, uh.” Louis followed Dan’s gaze to a familiar mop of hair and thought, _ah._ “Looked like he knew you.”

Harry was drinking something that definitely had more fruit than alcohol with a girl who kept trying to braid a cocktail umbrella into his hair. Louis looked on, inexplicably fond, until Dan cleared his throat. 

“That’s Harry,” Louis said, because Dan looked expectant, but didn’t offer any more information. Didn’t know what he could have said, anyway; Harry didn’t have a label. He never had. Dan seemed to take it to mean, _no one important,_ which, on top being as laughably far from the truth as it was possible to get, might have also been the crux of all—this.

Louis takes a sip of his tea and watches Zayn draw a little fish. “I hope that marker’s not permanent. For your sake.”

Zayn scoffs and draws a bigger fish, with bigger teeth. “I’m turning your little flea market souvenir into a work of art. You should be thanking me.”

Louis frowns. Their dining table is a bit worn around the edges, yeah, a bit lopsided, even, but it’s not _that_ bad. “It’s not that bad,” he says, “it has character,” and then immediately wants to slap himself, because that’s something Harry would say.

Zayn looks at him knowingly. “I see the conditioning is going well.” 

“Piss off,” Louis sighs, and lets him scribble to his heart’s content. Harry will probably find the big fish eats little fish only to get eaten by a whole school of little fish situation now illustrated on hardwood _charming._ “Remember when we first met?”

“Of course,” Zayn says absently. “I only think about it all the time. Constantly.”

Zayn didn’t used to be this mouthy; Louis has been a terrible influence on him. He was quieter when they met, might have been called shy if it weren’t for his complete refusal to take any shit. Louis ran into him quite on accident, in an empty art room at the uni he hadn’t known existed, and spent a good few minutes floored by the prettiest boy he’d ever seen before he made a move. 

Zayn was stood in front of a huge canvas. He had a fat paintbrush in hand and a frown on his face that deepened when Louis walked up to him and said, as charming as all get, “Looking good.” 

Louis has yet to see anyone look as unimpressed as Zayn did then. “It’s just primer.” 

“Oh,” Louis said, and then grinned and turned it around like he always did. “Wasn’t talking about the painting, love.”

The way Zayn smiled then, quick like he hadn’t wanted to be charmed but couldn’t help it, is the way he smiles at Louis now, if a bit more tempered. It’s been years, though, and Louis’ repertoire doesn’t reinvent itself, so he takes what he can get.

The scribbles are turning into a proper illustration. Louis isn’t sure, but there’s a blob that’s starting to look like a whale. “Did you think the same thing, then? About Harry and I.”

“No, because you’d just tried to chat me up.”

“Well, if I hadn’t.”

Zayn sighs. “Lou. Either tell me what you want to tell me, or I’m going to start talking about myself.”

“Fine,” Louis says, and reaches out to smudge the whale’s eye, spiteful. “I want to stop feeling like this. You joked about us being, what, co-dependent? Yeah? That’s fucking it all up, isn’t it? I want that to stop. I want to keep parts of my life separate. I want to—to—”

“Compartmentalize.” 

“Right.” He drags his hand over the table and pushes the tea away. “Harry bleeds over into everything. That’s not good, is it?” 

“I don’t know,” Zayn says. “Is it?”

“No,” Louis says, and wishes he didn’t sound like he was trying to convince himself. “Because then it all goes to shit.”

Zayn’s quiet for a long time, and Louis finishes the last of his tea, even though it’s gone cold. The eye Louis ruined has been turned into an eye patch, and is now accompanied by a feathery hat; pirate whale looks dashing, and Louis wants to laugh and cry all at once. 

“You can’t just stop feeling something,” Zayn says finally. “It’s useless to try.”

Louis doesn’t tell him he already knows that, but he does. The last three years have been bloody exhausting, and it doesn’t take long for Louis to spiral down memory lane again, but what Zayn says next jolts him right back. 

“Have you thought about moving out?”

* * *

“Zayn thinks I should move out,” Louis blurts as soon as Harry walks through the door. He’s got an armful of groceries and his hair goes wild when he takes off the beanie and shakes it out.

“Yeah?” 

He doesn’t sound upset by the thought. Or particularly surprised. Louis takes the bags from him and deposits them on the counter, frowning. “Yeah. What’s all this, then? I thought you went to the studio.”

“I did. Fooled around for a while but they didn’t really need me, so.” He toes off his shoes and pads into the kitchen while Louis peers in the bags. “I stopped by the store on the way back. Thought I’d make a big dinner, since we didn’t have lunch.”

Louis takes out a handful of little green tomatoes and tosses them into the air. “What are these called again?”

“Tomatillos,” Harry says, so patiently no one would ever suspect Louis asks him that at least once a week. “When did Zayn leave?” 

“You just missed him.” A few tomatillos have manage to evade capture and rolled onto the floor. Louis goes after them and wonders if Harry would mind having this conversation while Louis is crouched under the dining table. “He, um. We were talking, and he said I should get my own place. Like, it’d be good for me.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What’s that?” Louis pops his head up so fast he nearly bangs it on the table. “You know?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, from where he’s messing with the blender, “he told me. After the whole Niall thing.”

Louis stares at him. “What Niall thing?”

“You know,” Harry says. “After we broke up.”

“Sorry, _what?_ ” He scrambles up and into the kitchen, tomatillos forgotten. Harry blinks at him when Louis turns him around, but there’s no traces of humour on his face. “When were you and Niall even dating?”

Louis knows about their brief _thing_ —he was the one who tried to make a sleepy Niall an omelet, the first morning after, which turned out awful but Niall ate without complaint—but he always supposed it was just a shag here and there, a bit of fun. Nothing serious. Nothing that would require a break-up, much less Zayn’s input on the matter. 

Harry’s only response is to shrug, which is annoying on a level Louis doesn’t want to contemplate. 

“How did I not know about this?” 

“I thought you did,” Harry says. “Bet now you wish we hadn’t stopped sending out memos, huh?”

“Wish you’d stop trying to be funny,” Louis says, and Harry sticks out his tongue. “So, Zayn recycles his pep talks, is that what you’re saying? I didn’t think he’d stoop that low.” Harry’s taken out the onions, so Louis backs away into the drafty little corner that serves as their living room. He can count on one hand the things he loves about this flat, but the thought of leaving still makes his insides knot. “He said I needed space to be—not alone, but…”

“Yourself,” Harry fills in, and Louis looks up in surprise. “Space to be Louis, instead of HarryandLouis.”

“Yeah,” Louis says, then frowns. “Uh, no. It’s LouisandHarry.”

Harry rolls his watery eyes and pulls on his apron. _Why did the banana go to the psychiatrist?_ it reads, under a distraught looking banana. 

_Because it had a split personality,_ Louis answers in his head, and promptly hates himself. Harry’s mouth quirks like he knows, and Louis busies himself with the stack of mail on the coffee table to hide his smile. “Did he tell you the same thing? That you needed a space for just Harry?”

“More or less.” 

“And?”

“And nothing. I decided I liked LouisandHarry better.”

Louis doesn’t look up. “Just like that?”

“Yeah,” Harry says quietly. “Just like that.”

Louis thinks it could be that easy, if he let it be. If he could—but he can’t, because while he doesn’t remember anything about that night, he can picture it, feel the echoes of how desperate he must have been to pull Dan close and pepper his face with kisses and say, I love you, I love you, please love me, like he’s wanted to every time Harry looks at him and smiles. 

He breathes out through his nose, slowly. He knew it was foolish to talk to Harry about this before he even opened his mouth, but it’s become instinct now, to go to him for everything. To tell him everything. 

Well, almost. And hasn’t that turned out just brilliantly for everyone involved.

He shakes his head at himself and returns his attention to the mail he’s sorting, just as he picks up a pamphlet that makes his stomach bottom out.

“Harry. What’s this supposed to be?” 

Louis knows what it is. He turns to find Harry staring down at the counter, mouth pressed in a thin line. 

“I called them a few days ago. To request the intro packet.” 

A few days ago, he says, like both of them don’t know it was the day Louis came home and collapsed on the sofa next to him, tucked his head under his chin and said, “Get the champagne, honey, I’ve begun climbing the corporate ladder.”

Louis bites the inside of his cheek and tries to keep from yelling. “And why the fuck would you do that, when you know I have no intention of going back to school?”

Harry shrugs, but his eyes are cautious. “You could take a look at it. There’s summer sessions, and things. A lot more options now, if you wanted—”

“I don’t want,” Louis interrupts. “I don’t even want to _talk_ about this.” 

Harry sets his jaw. “I told you we would.” 

“Oh, fuck you.” Louis can feel the colour flooding his face, the headache beginning to form at his temples. “Why can’t you just leave it alone? This doesn’t fucking concern you.”

“You’re miserable,” Harry says. “You’ve been miserable for two years, how does that not concern me?”

“Because it’s not your bloody life!”

“It makes a difference,” Harry says. “Everything you do makes a difference to me.”

“Well, maybe it shouldn’t,” Louis snaps. “Maybe you do need that space.”

Harry doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing. “Don’t.” 

“I’m in love with you,” Louis says, “but that doesn’t mean you’ve got any right to—” 

“This isn’t about that. Don’t make it about that.”

“Then what the fuck is it about, Harry?”

“You’re acting like I’ve gone and—I haven’t made any decisions for you. I just wanted to talk.”

“Okay,” Louis says, “let’s talk. Let’s talk about how I’ll make my share of rent while I finish school. Let’s talk about how far a career in teaching drama will get me, how it won’t pay even half of what I’ve got right now.”

“Let’s talk about how at least you’ll be happy.” 

“I won’t be any happier if I’m broke,” Louis says, but a tiny, wretched voice in his head calls him a liar.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about rent,” Harry says, like this is a serious thing they’re considering, like Louis isn’t mocking him. “I have enough money.”

“You’re not touching your inheritance.”

“That’s not your decision,” Harry says, “because it’s not your _bloody_ life,” and right, Louis had forgotten how Harry gets when he’s been cornered. 

“Don’t act like a fucking child,” he says, suddenly exhausted, and Harry’s eyes narrow into furious slits.

“Don’t treat me like one. I’m not stupid, I know we could scrape by if you weren’t so frightened of—”

“I’m not _frightened,_ I’m being practical—”

“Fuck your practicality,” Harry yells. “I just want you to be happy!”

The violent thumping coming from upstairs startles them both into silence. Louis hadn’t realized they’d been making so much noise, but if it was enough to bother a lady who Louis is pretty sure went deaf sometime during the first world war, then, well.

“Sorry,” Harry says to the ceiling, “sorry about that,” and the thumping stops. He doesn’t meet Louis’ eyes before he turns back to the stove, where, judging by the sudden slump of his shoulders, Louis thinks something must have started to burn. 

“If you think,” Harry starts, then stops. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and when he does, he sounds tired. “Zayn’s usually right, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, and closes his eyes, slumps back against the sofa. “But not always.”

* * *

Technically, they were watching a movie, but Louis was so exhausted he could barely tell the man-eating crocodile from the trees. He had the couch, because Harry was too long for a comfortable lie-down, anyway, and Louis didn’t think he could keep himself upright. It marked four months and a handful of awful, soul crushing days at his new job, and the first time Harry asked, “Why don’t you quit?” 

Louis had one hand under his cheek and the other in Harry’s hair. “’cause you haven’t got the funds to be my sugar daddy.”

Harry tipped his head back to look at him, eyes puffy from fatigue and bottle green. “’m serious. What happened to teaching?”

His skin was so soft. Louis trailed his fingers over his brow and Harry nuzzled into him, eyes drooping. “Same as what happened to football. And singing. And international superstardom.” 

“Lou,” Harry mumbled. “’m _serious._ ”

Louis thumbed the arch of his eyebrow, smoothed it out. “So am I. Come on, Haz, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even really know what I want. ‘s like looking at a brochure and making all these plans and spending all this time and money and once you’re there—you get there, and you realize the Grand Canyon is just a fucking hole in the ground.”

“You’ve never been to the Grand Canyon.”

Louis sighed deeply. “You get so hung up on the details.”

Harry’s answering smile made his toes curl, so Louis slapped him on the cheek and turned him forcibly to face the telly. It wasn’t until the croc had finished off the last of the tourists that Harry spoke again, and so softly that Louis almost didn’t catch it.

“But why would you keep doing something you hate when you could be finding something you don’t?”

“Stability,” Louis said, after the credits started to roll. “Safety.”

“Safe is boring.”

“Oh, yeah?” Louis tugged on a curl until Harry looked at him. The lights from the telly played off his face in strange, lovely ways. “And who told you that?”

Sometimes Harry smiled with just his eyes. “This boy I used to know.”

* * *

He calls his mum after Harry’s gone to bed. It’s too late for conversation, and she’s grumpy because he’s woken her up, but she still listens to him ramble about anything and everything until he can make himself say what he wants to.

“What if I told you I wasn’t happy?”

There is a pause. “Louis. What’s this about?”

“Mum, just. Answer me.”

“I don’t know,” she says, finally. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted you to be.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He can practically hear her vibrating with the need to ask, so he sighs. “It’s not about Harry. Not—all of it.” 

“But some?”

“Well,” Louis says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “something’s always about Harry, isn’t it?”

* * *

Louis heads for Dan’s flat as soon as he’s off work on Monday, armed with the empty boxes he pilfered, because perks of being promoted from Unimportant Editorial Assistant to Somewhat Important Editorial assistant apparently include no one batting an eye as you tote office supplies out of the workplace. 

The flat’s dark and empty when he gets there, despite the text he’d thoughtfully sent in the afternoon ( _coming to pick up my things at 7. in case you wanted to supervise_ ) and it doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned any over the weekend. The sink’s overflowing with dishes and there’s clothes strewn all over the floor and, all right, maybe living with Harry’s neuroses has made Louis more sensitive to this sort of thing, but for fuck’s sake, he’s starting to doubt the sheets have even been washed. 

He doesn’t bother rooting around in the bedroom; he’s only really here for one thing, and finds the AVP box set buried under a pile of movies that he doesn’t think Dan even knows he has. He’s in the middle of putting all of them back when the door clicks open. 

“Almost done,” Louis says, and doesn’t turn around to look at him. Dan’s silent, and Louis can feel his nerves start to fray, but forces himself to keep going; he finds a few more movies that belong to him, his headphones, an older charger for his mobile, and is carefully taking a copy of Zayn’s portfolio from the bookshelf when Dan finally speaks.

“I was going to ask you to move in.”

It’s so removed from anything Louis was expecting that he doesn’t even think before he says, “I wouldn’t have.”

It sounds cruel, but Dan just makes a short noise, like he was expecting it. Louis stares at his box—there aren’t even enough things to fill one box, fuck, what is he doing here—and gets up, dropping the spare keys onto the coffee table before he makes for the door. 

“I’ll mail you your things,” Dan says, when Louis pulls the door open. “If I find any more. Your address isn’t going to change, is it?”

Louis steps outside and turns to look at him, sees what he’s really asking in the set of his jaw. 

“No,” he says, “it won’t change,” and discovers it really is as easy as that. 

* * *

Harry’s sprawled on the sofa watching some nature documentary when Louis gets home. 

“Hi,” he says, a little cautiously, like he’s not sure everything’s all right, but can’t keep himself from engaging Louis anyway. He’s wearing Louis’ trackies, which are far too short on him, and an old Henley that’s so threadbare it might as well be transparent. His hair has been pinned back with the barrettes he accidentally acquired through a Secret Santa that one time, and he looks soft and warm and unfairly tempting.

“Hi,” Louis says, and drops his box on the coffee table before dropping himself in Harry’s lap. It’s not the most comfortable way to hug, and he’s not as mindful of his knees as he should be, but Louis feels restless and buoyant, and like the only way to tether himself is to hook his arms around Harry’s shoulders and bury his face in his neck.

He smells like sweat and traces of Louis’ cologne, and his arms go around Louis instantly, pull him in until they’re crushed together so tightly it’s hard to breathe. Louis closes his eyes and lets himself be held.

“Good day?” Harry asks, after what feels likes ages, and not long enough. Louis can feel the thrum of his voice when he talks.

“Yeah,” Louis says. “I’ve decided to stick around so I don’t lose half my shit in the divorce.”

“That’s wise,” Harry says seriously. “I would’ve taken you to court.”

Louis smiles against his hair before pulling back so he can catch his eye. 

“I’ll think about school,” he says curtly, like he hadn’t spent the day at work emailing universities, “but you have to leave it alone. I mean it, Harry. Don’t bring it up again. And don’t look so fucking pleased.”

“But I am,” Harry protests, and holds still while Louis takes the stupid barrettes out of his hair. It’s springy from sweat, proper curly, and Louis digs his hands in and musses it up. 

“Shut up about it,” Louis orders, scratching at his scalp just gently, and bites his lip at the pleased sound Harry makes, low in his throat, and the way his eyes go glassy. He blinks slowly, like he’s reluctant to make the effort, and Louis drops his hands down so they’re cupping the back of his neck, thumbs on the line of his jaw. Harry has a way of looking at you, sometimes, that makes it impossible to look away. “I think—”

Harry hums questioningly when Louis cuts himself off. “What?”

 _I think I’m more myself when I’m with you than I am anywhere else,_ Louis doesn’t say, because it sounds like one of those many, many things he should’ve kept to himself. “Nothing.”

Harry looks like he’d frown if he weren’t so content. “No, what?”

“Nothing,” Louis repeats, just as the penguins on the telly burst into song. Not so much documentary, then, but it does have the effect of distracting Harry, at least. 

“It’s nothing.”

* * *

He doesn’t know what to do with himself when his correspondence with the university ends up leading to something that just might work out in his favor. He can’t stay at work because he feels like he’s going to jump out of his skin any second, and he doesn’t want to go home, because it’s Harry’s day off, and on top of his infuriating ability to read Louis like an open, large print book, over the past few weeks he’s taken to staring at Louis with enough intensity to make him bristle. Telling him to stop just resulted in quicker—and what he no doubt believes are sneakier—glances, and there’s something about them, some unsettling, curious quality that makes Louis flush, vulnerable. 

He looks at Louis like he did that morning, over Dan’s shoulder, quiet and wondering—like he’s discovering Louis is in love with him all over again—and it drives Louis fucking _mad_ on a good day, so there’s no chance he’ll be able to handle it the way he is now: hands shaking, nerves shot, about to murder for a drink.

So, obviously, he calls the one person who’ll never say no to a pint at four in the afternoon.

* * *

“What’re we drinking to?”

“My ruin.”

“Cheers,” Niall says seriously, and they drink in silence until Louis is just buzzed enough to forget his problems and ask stupid questions. 

“So, you and Harry.”

Niall looks amused, but then very rarely does he not. “I thought for sure you’d open with _you_ and Harry.”

“One out of two isn’t bad,” Louis concedes, and wishes he could risk something stronger than beer for this conversation. Getting smashed and running his mouth hasn’t led to him swearing off alcohol all together, but he likes to think he’s a bit more cautious now—about the company he drunkenly keeps, if nothing else. “Why’d you two break it off?”

“Well,” Niall sighs, and Louis leans in despite himself. “That’s between me and Harry, isn’t it?”

“What?” Louis stares at him. “No. Come on, Nialler. Tell me.” 

“Can’t betray his trust like that, mate.”

Louis opens his mouth to argue, and then snaps it shut again. “You’re waiting on me to buy you lunch, aren’t you?”

Everything about Niall is contagious, but most especially his grin. “Maybe.”

Louis buys him a late lunch, and somewhere in between stealing each other’s chips and starting a slap fight that turns into a food fight and getting thrown out of the pub, in stitches from laughing so hard, he forgets what he’d asked, and why he’d wanted to know. So after they’ve wandered to the next pub and Louis has emptied his wallet of cash and they’ve propped each other up waiting for a cab, and Niall says, out of the blue,

“You’re always going to come first,”

Louis just turns to look at him in genuine, drunken pleasure, and says, “Hey! Thanks, mate,” and presses a sloppy kiss to his laughing mouth. “I love you, too.”

* * *

“Get the champagne, honey,” is the first thing Louis says as he stumbles through the door. “I’ve just given notice.” 

Harry looks up from his laptop and his eyes go so wide Louis starts to laugh. 

“Are you serious,” he demands, “Louis, are you fucking serious,” and then he’s gotten up and grabbed Louis around the waist and picked him clean off the floor. 

“Fuck!” Everything’s started spinning, or maybe that’s Louis. He has to stop laughing to catch enough breath to say, “oh, fuck, put me down, I’m going to be _sick._ ”

“You’re smashed,” Harry says, but he’s grinning so wide it has to hurt. Louis cups his face and hurts for him, all at once overwhelmed, and then Harry’s too close, coming closer. Louis can’t find his feet, doesn’t even know if he’s still upright, and it’s all mad, nonsense, but Harry’s mouth on his, that makes more sense than anything ever has.

Louis doesn’t know if there’s a wall behind him or if it’s just his fierce resistance to taking even a single step back, but Harry’s mouth is hot and tastes like straight tea and his big hands have found Louis’ and curled around him tight, tight.

Then his thumb presses into the center of Louis’ palm and Louis jolts like he’s been burned, suddenly, violently sober.

“Fuck,” he whispers, wrenches away. Harry’s hair is a mess and mouth wet, red, and he looks like he doesn’t know why there’s space between them. Louis has swallow around the lump in his throat before he can laugh and say, “fuck, Harry, I don’t need a bloody reward.”

“What?” His voice is shot. He seems drunk, and that’s strange, because it’s Louis who’s been drinking.

“I haven’t done it for you,” Louis says, trying to make sense of—he doesn’t know. His mouth throbs. “Not because I’m, you know. You don’t have to—”

“Shut up,” Harry says, “just—stop talking.”

“Sorry,” Louis says, blinking hard. The inside of his mouth feels fuzzy; he just kissed Harry with a fuzzy mouth. Or had Harry kissed him? Why had Harry kissed him? “He wasn’t supposed to tell you. Have I ruined it? I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want anything to change.”

Harry takes a step back, and Louis can’t read the expression on his face. Louis can barely even see it. Fuck, he’s pissed.

“Nothing’s changed.”

“Only everything.” There is a wall, as it turns out. Louis slumps back against it and slides down. The rush has died away in increments; he remembers laughing in the cab, though he can’t remember why, and the frantic buzz under his skin when he’d thought of telling Harry. Might’ve done something foolish again, he wanted to say, just to hear Harry disagree. 

And now—

“I can’t stand it when you look at me like that,” he hears himself say.

“Like what?” Harry doesn’t sound like he wants to know the answer. He looks like he wants to be anywhere but here. 

“I don’t know,” Louis says, tired down to his bones. “You look at me like—I’m pathetic.”

“No. I don’t.”

“No, you don’t,” Louis agrees, but it’s close enough, anyway, if he feels it—doesn’t matter what Harry’s thinking, what it really means. “I’m acting like a tit, aren’t I? It’s just a bloody job. Why am I so—people do this every day. Don’t they?” 

Harry says nothing, so Louis makes an effort and lifts his head to look at him.

“I’m going to get over you,” he lies. “You just need to give me a chance. A proper chance.”

“Okay,” Harry says, and Louis nods until it starts to feel like he won’t be able to stop. 

“I’m not frightened,” he says, because it seems important. It must have been, because Harry comes close and hauls him up, pulls him into a hug. Louis buries his face in his shoulder and says, “I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to—to—”

“Louis.”

“Not ever,” Louis whispers fiercely. “Understand?”

“Yes,” Harry says, and if there’s something quiet and devastated about the way he says it, well, it’s not like Louis will remember.

* * *

“I wish you’d stop drinking.”

“Well, I wish you’d start,” Louis said, leaning over to breathe heavily down Liam’s neck until he sighed and pushed him off. “That way you might look less like a geriatric trapped in a fit mechanic’s body.”

He laughed at the disgruntled look on Liam’s face and polished off his drink. Clubbing with Liam was one of his favourite pastimes, because there were few things as entertaining as watching him take great pains to gently turn down every shitfaced twink who tried to climb him, but he could do without the lecture. The same lecture. Every single time. 

“I’d like to have a conversation that you’ll remember in the morning, is all. For once.”

“Liam,” Louis said patiently. “I can guarantee you’re the only person here worried about having a _conversation._ ” 

Liam’s frown deepened. “Is it so awful that I might want to talk to you instead of getting pissed?” 

Louis groaned. “Christ, fine, so go ahead. Talk! I’m loads better company when I’m drunk, anyway.” 

“No,” Liam said, “you’re not.”

“I am so,” Louis argued. He was. He was funnier, flirtier, and infinitely more charming. “Everyone loves drunk me.” 

Liam sighed. “Everyone loves you anyway, Louis.”

“Not everyone,” Louis said, shaking his head, and then he laughed a little. “But you love me, Liam.”

“Always,” Liam said seriously. “And—I miss you.”

“I’m right here,” Louis said, but Liam didn’t look like he agreed. And the thing was—Liam had this way of looking at you, some twisted combination of disappointment and genuine affection that made you want to both bask in the attention and hide forever. Liam was a fucking buzzkill. “Fuck. We can leave, if that’s what you want. But—could we dance a bit, first? For a little while.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, “come here,” but when Louis grabbed his hand he just pulled him into a hug, held him and swayed. 

* * *

Louis wakes up to the quiet click of the door, sweating and nauseous.

“Why am I in your bed?”

Harry doesn’t look like he’s slept at all, eyes puffy and red. “You wouldn’t stay in yours. Said the pillows smelled strange.”

“Oh.” Harry’s pillows smell good. Louis is tempted to bury his nose in them and pull the covers over his head, stay in bed forever. But Harry’s handing him tea, and that’s a bit more tempting. “They smell a bit like—chocolate. I think.”

“Right. You never washed them out, did you.” 

Louis sips at his tea and blinks up at him. “No? Was I meant to?” He has a headache like a physical weight at his temples, but the tea’s soothing his throat and quieting his stomach, and one more cup might get him well on his way to feeling like a human being again. “What time is it? God, I don’t want to get up. Do I have to get up? Do I need to go to work if they’ve already found a replacement for me?”

Harry makes a small sound and reaches out to brush the hair off of Louis’ forehead. “It’s been one day.”

His hand is cold. Louis sighs and leans into it. “You don’t know these people. They’ve probably had someone on call for ages. Fuck. I can’t believe I’ve quit my job. I’m an idiot.” He looks up at Harry’s silence. “Don’t go rushing to my defense, or anything.”

Harry’s thumb sweeps over his temple, slow, steady. 

“Harry?” Louis catches his hand. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

Harry blinks, and Louis’ tired, sluggish brain struggles to make sense of the change that comes over him—his sudden, sweet smile. “Nothing. I love you.”

“Love you,” Louis parrots immediately, and laughs when Harry smacks a loud kiss on his forehead, then another on his cheek, his chin, the corner of his mouth. He’s wide awake now, and flushed warm, insides gone loose and swimmy. Happy. “Cut it out, Haz.”

Harry releases him with one more showy kiss against his temple. “Come on, get up. Two weeks to freedom.” 

Louis scoffs, but it does feel a bit like rushing to freedom. Maybe, he thinks as Harry pulls him out of bed, maybe more than a bit.

* * *

Two weeks seem to go by between one blink and the next. They have found someone to replace him, so all there’s left for him to do is tie up loose ends and do some coaching. He ends up spending the majority of his time talking to everyone who’s sad to see him go, from the people he’s worked with for years to the ones he’s met by the coolers once, maybe twice, and goes home feeling baffled, because he had no idea he’d made such an impact.

Harry rolls his eyes when Louis tells him as much, but his mouth quirks up, fond. 

They all meet up at the pub on his last day, because of course they do, and it’s loud and messy in the booth they’ve crammed themselves into, just the way Louis likes it. At least until he turns down beer in favour of lemonade, and everyone turns to look at him.

“What?” He shrugs and chews on his straw, says, “I’m trying to get on Liam’s good side,” because there’s no way to explain the anxious squirm of his insides whenever he thinks about losing another night to drinking. There’s no way to say that he’s missed something and that he knows it—that it was something about _Harry,_ and that’s unacceptable. So he winks at Liam and plays footsie with Niall and holds Zayn’s careful gaze; does all this and enjoys himself, because the lemonade’s fizzy and the food’s good and the company’s fantastic. 

Harry curls a hand around his wrist and Louis catches his breath. 

He’s a little flushed when Louis turns to look at him, and a lot sweet; his eyes are dark and he’s got a bit of sauce at the corner of his mouth that Louis wants to taste. He’s been plastered to Louis’ side all evening, and that’s nothing new, as familiar as the beat his fingers are tapping on Louis’ pulse, but it still makes Louis’ heart leap into his throat, hopeful and terrified.

Then Harry nods his head in the direction of the bar and says, “That bloke’s been staring at you for ages. The fit one.” 

Louis doesn’t know how long it takes him to unstick his throat, but he does it, and makes a show of peering at the bar. “Yeah? Think I could pull?”

Harry’s eyes flicker to Zayn before he shakes out his curls and smiles. His hand falls away. “Think you already have.”

The guy is fit, and definitely interested; the perfect topper to the night, and all Louis wants is Harry’s hand on him again. “Dunno if I’m up for it tonight, though.” 

“Aw,” Niall says. “Tommo’s had a long day.”

Zayn raises his eyebrows. “Are you telling me copious amounts of alcohol actually make it _easier_ for you to get it up?” 

“I’m a medical marvel,” Louis announces, glancing at Harry out of the corner of his eye. He’s folding a napkin into a tiny, lopsided triangle. Louis wants to go home with him, and the fact that he can—that he will, even if it’s just to have a cuppa and fall asleep watching whatever’s on the telly, is immense. So Louis finishes off his lemonade and sends his best smile to the bloke at the bar before forgetting him entirely. “It’s clearly not his lucky day.”

Zayn snorts, eyes bright. “Clearly.”

* * *

The first time Louis had his heart broken was the day his mum sat him down and told him they had to move.

“But why?” he kept asking. Maybe it was strange, for an seven year old boy to love an ancient, drafty house with so much passion, but he did—more than his toys, more than his school, more than his friends. “Why do we have to leave?”

He jerked away when his mum tried to shush him. “Darling,” she said, while he wiped furiously at his eyes. “I’ve told you. With your father’s work, he hasn’t got a choice.”

“Why do _we_ have to leave?” Louis demanded. “He can go. We can stay.”

“Because we’re a family,” she said gently, “and we stick together.” 

“I don’t want to,” Louis said, “and neither do you, I know you don’t.” 

“Maybe not,” she conceded, “maybe I don’t want to. But it’s not just about me, baby. It’s not my life; it’s our life. Do you understand?”

He didn’t understand, and he wouldn’t, not until more than a decade later. He might have asked, and his mum might have taken the time to explain, if he hadn’t been suddenly gripped by such a fear that he burst into tears all over again.

“Are we going to be homeless?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” his father said, “what the hell have you been telling him?”

But Louis wasn’t listening, all of his attention on the blurry form of his mum shaking her head. 

“No, Louis,” she said, “because home isn’t a place, it’s people who love you.” She held out a hand and waited until he took it before pulling him into a hug. 

“And I will always love you.” 

* * *

He’s two weeks into unemployment when Zayn calls him.

“Are you at home?”

“Uh, yeah,” Louis says, remote in hand, flipping through channels aimlessly. “Where the fuck else would I be?”

There’s still time before he can start in on his fall quarter, and he hasn’t had to face this level of inactivity in years. He’d tried spending his days being productive around the house and failed miserably, so now he spends them lounging about watching bad telly, reading fifty shades of bad erotic fiction, and calling either Harry or his mum or both to complain about how mind-numbingly bored he is. He’d regret giving up his paycheck so early if he weren’t also secretly enjoying the respite. 

“Good,” Zayn says curtly. “I need you to do something for me.” 

“If it involves getting up, the answer is no.” 

“Good thing I’m not asking you, then,” Zayn says. “Harry’s borrowed a few sketches of mine and I need them back. They should be in a big manila envelope somewhere. Find them.” 

“Sure, yeah,” Louis mutters, already distracted by a French feature film that’s starting to look a lot like the beginning of a porno.

“ _Now,_ Louis,” Zayn says, testy, and hangs up before Louis can complain about how he actually used to get paid for this shit. 

Harry’s room is smaller than his and cleaned more than once in a fortnight, so Louis doesn’t expect it to take so bloody long to find a fucking envelope, but after he’s poked through the desk and the dresser and even the fucking closet and discovered a whole bunch of nothing, he gives up. He’s getting good at that, and it’d be worrying if it didn’t feel so natural. Or maybe it should be worrying _because_ it feels so natural—whatever. Louis has skinny French guys exchanging tentative kisses to worry about, and he’s gotten well into it—it has an actual plot, and everything—by the time Zayn calls him again. 

“Piss off,” Louis says. “I dunno where he’s put it, I’ve looked everywhere. Maybe he took it to the studio. What’d he need your sketches for, anyway?”

“They should be in his room. Go look again.”

“He’ll be home in an hour! Can’t you wait a fucking hour and ask him to find it?”

“No.”

“Ohh,” Louis says, the proverbial light bulb flickering to life. “I get it. Still haven’t kissed and made up, have you?”

Harry and Zayn have been at odds with each other since Louis’ little liberty pub crawl. It’s carried on far longer than any of their other fights, and they’re shockingly close-mouthed about it too; Louis has, for the first time, absolutely no clue what they’ve got their knickers in a twist over. He does get the feeling it’s Harry’s fault, whatever it is, so he takes pity on Zayn and ambles back inside to begin the search all over again.

“I’m telling you, mate,” he sighs. “If it was here, I’d have found it.”

Zayn makes a short, agitated noise. “Look wherever he hides things.”

Louis laughs. “Why would he _hide_ it? What, as some kind of revenge? Come on, you know he needs help with that sort of thing. Usually mine. Or yours.” He untucks the sheets and hefts up the mattress anyway, but there’s nothing there but some cash and ugly jewelry and a few old Polaroids that Louis is going to come back and sift through later. The floorboard behind the door’s finally been nailed down, so there’s only the closet left; Louis crouches down and takes out the shoes and shoeboxes and odds and ends from the bottom, until there’s a slat he can drag up by his nails. “Oh, hey. Ha. Found it.”

“Good,” Zayn says, almost gently, and hangs up.

The folder’s fat and heavy, which would have sparked Louis’ curiosity if, well, it wasn’t constantly sparked anyway. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting; they all take an almost obsessive interest in Zayn’s work, but what sort of sketches Harry would have borrowed and then hidden, he doesn’t know—but it has to be something dirty, so Louis is grinning as he takes them out.

He doesn’t get it at first; it’s just a mess of blue pencil that makes up a picture vastly removed from anything he’s seen Zayn do before. There’s all these angles and sharp, straight lines, and nothing clicks until he flips to the next sketch and realizes he’s looking at a building. A house. 

His smile dies slowly.

There must be a dozen of them, some smudgy, some unfinished, and one so detailed Louis is afraid to touch it. They’re nothing like proper house plans, not at all organized or scaled, and there are a few that look like something out of a picture book, like someone sat Zayn down and said, _this is what I want to see when I walk in,_ and he picked up a pencil and brought it to life.

The second Louis realizes that’s exactly what happened is when the folder slips out of his nerveless fingers. The sketches scatter, and he scrambles to pick them up and put them back, terrified he’s going to ruin them somehow. He no longer wants to know what this is about, doesn’t even want to think of what it could mean, but it’s like he’s lost all control over his limbs because he stacks the pages together and begins to go through them, instead. 

Some of them have little notes, at the very edges of the page, in Harry’s handwriting. _high ceilings_ , he’s written. _big foyer?? need room. piano,_ and the very next drawing is of exactly that, big spiral staircase and all. 

When they came to see their flat for the first time, Louis had been a shit about it; for him, the only thing it had going for it was that it was on the commute line, and reasonably affordable. But it was also old and ugly and ridiculously cramped and when they walked in Louis had made a show of gasping, looked back at Harry wide-eyed and said, “And the baby grand can go right here!”

Their landlady looked alarmed, but Harry clapped a hand over his mouth and went red from laughing so hard. “It’s nice,” he whispered, once they’d taken the whole, hilariously short tour, despite Louis’ loud snort. “Don’t be mean. I like it. It has character.” 

So does this pencil and paper house. It’s not until Louis flips further back that he realizes where the hodge-podge of design comes from. The folder wasn’t just full of sketches—there’s print-outs too, photographs of houses for sale, and a whole bundle of listings dating all the way back to two years ago—two fucking years—everything from auctions to foreclosures, organized by price and location and probably a million other things he can’t make any sense of right now. 

Louis has never been so painfully aware of his own heartbeat. He wants mad, conflicting things: he wants to shove this all back into the closet and pretend he’s never seen it; he wants to call Zayn and say, _why did you tell me_ , and _why didn’t you tell me sooner?_ He wants to curl up into a ball. He wants to shout. 

He wants Harry, and he sits there on the floor, papers in hand, until he gets him.

“Lou, I’m home! I told you about Nick’s birthday, right? Well we had some cake left over so I—”

There is something very satisfying about the way Harry’s breath catches in his throat, but the look on his face is even better.

“Hi,” Louis says. “Good day?”

Harry closes his eyes once, briefly. “Louis.”

“Sorry about all the mess,” Louis says, gesturing to the gutted closet, the unmade bed. “I got a little distracted.”

Harry says nothing, but his mouth twists and he blinks hard and Louis realizes with a jolt that he’s frightened, and all of his anger at Zayn and the secrets and being made a fool of drains out like it never even existed. 

“When were you going to tell me? Before you bought the house, I hope.”

His voice is still mocking, because he’s frightened too. But Harry seems to sense the change in him because he straightens up a bit and clears his throat, says, “I wouldn’t have—not by myself,” and Louis’ heart starts to pound so hard he goes dizzy with it.

“You tell me what this means,” he manages to say, thumping the folder on the floor. “Tell me right now.”

Harry’s barely breathing. “You know what it means.”

_”Tell me.”_

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

He says it like he says hi, or good morning; like something he’s said every day of his life. Louis’ vision goes blurry before he can bite the inside of his mouth hard enough to make it stop. 

“Is that right?” He raises his eyebrows and pretends his voice didn’t just crack. “And will you want that tomorrow, too? How about the day after?”

He’s never seen Harry so still. “Yes.”

“A year from now,” Louis challenges. “Two years. Three.”

“Yes,” Harry says quietly. “Yes. Yes.” 

“After we’ve gotten married and bought the place,” Louis says, digging his nails into his palms. “Won’t change your mind then, will you?”

Harry shakes his head no, mute. 

Louis tries to keep his voice steady. “Will you, once I’ve started losing my hair? Once we—once we start regretting ever having kids?”

Harry’s hands are shaking. Louis notices this with the kind of detached curiosity that means he’s far in over his head and won’t stop for anything, not now. “Louis.”

“When we’re ready for retirement,” he says, almost absently, “and discover how fucked we are because you spent all our money on the bloody house—”

“No,” Harry chokes out, “no, I won’t ever change my mind.”

Louis looks at him and suffers such a fierce welling of affection he’s not sure he can contain it. But he does, somehow, and even manages to carefully reorder the sketches and put them back in the folder before he gets up. 

“Well,” he says, dusting off his hands. “Good. I’m glad that’s sorted. Now what was that about cake?”

Harry catches him around the waist before he’s even reached the door, and Louis is laughing by the time he fits their mouths together, presses him up against the wall and kisses him like he never wants to do anything else. Louis pulls at him until there’s no space between bodies, and even then, because there’s this yawning ache inside him that wants to crush them into one impossible whole.

Harry tastes like frosting—vanilla, because there’s no accounting for his boss’s taste. Their noses knock together and Louis kisses him hard and wet, feels heat skitter down his spine, tangle inside. His fingers are buried in Harry’s curls and Louis uses the grip to nudge his mouth the way he wants it, turns the kiss rough, slows it right down.

“Why’d you make me wait so long,” Louis whispers into his mouth and Harry’s eyes snap open. He makes his small, wounded noise, and his throat works as he swallows; Louis kisses him again, gently, like an apology.

“You took me so seriously,” he says finally, and Louis watches him blink, watches him breathe. “You were the only one who did. And I was just a stupid kid, Louis. I thought—I was so afraid you’d find out you were wrong about me. That you were seeing someone who wasn’t there.”

“I was seeing you,” Louis murmurs, because the stupid kid he fell in love with is standing right in front of him. “And I’m never wrong, you twat.”

Harry laughs like he can’t help it; Louis swallows it down. He chases the wet catch of their mouths and Harry just opens up to it, lets himself be kissed like he’s been waiting for it. 

“We were so young,” he whispers. “I didn’t want you to regret me.” 

Louis thumbs the corner of his eye and leans their foreheads together. “So you were, what? Waiting for me to fall in love with someone else?”

“Waiting for you to realize you couldn’t.”

Louis bites at his bottom lip, hard enough to force a sound of him. “I knew that,” he whispers fiercely. “I already knew that, Harry.”

Harry shakes his head, stubborn. “You had to _know_ it.”

“Jesus, you—” Louis wants to strangle him for all the years he’s fucking wasted, but he’d rather kiss him, instead. He’d always rather just kiss him. “And were you going to wait on me forever? However long it took you to be satisfied that I _knew?_ ” 

“No,” Harry says, “I wanted—the first time you had—with that bloke. I don’t remember his name.”

“Yeah, you do,” Louis says softly, and colour blooms hectic in Harry’s cheeks. “God, Harry.”

“I wanted to tell you but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know anything. And you were my best friend. You were everything.” His breath hits Louis’ upper lip in short, unsteady bursts. “It was all so easy, wasn’t it? It just happened. We never even had to try, we just—fit. What if I ruined it?” 

“What if I’d gone and fallen for someone else?” 

“I thought you had,” Harry says, and his hands find Louis’ like he’s seeking something familiar. “Every time, I thought—and it drove me mad.”

“Didn’t look like it did,” Louis says, and Harry kisses him, so thoroughly it tears low, hungry sounds from Louis’ throat. His mouth hurts by the time Harry’s pulled back, throbs in time with his heart. “Can’t have been that affected, can you, since you didn’t do a bloody thing about it—”

“I wanted to,” Harry bites out.

“Yeah? What did you want?”

“I don’t know,” he says, so obviously a lie, “Lou—I don’t want to talk,” and the agonized, embarrassed curl of his mouth has Louis laughing, putting both hands on his chest and pushing him back until they hit the edge of the bed and tumble in. Louis’ insides are twisting themselves into little knots, tying and releasing; Harry’s mouth looks as red as Louis’ feels, as swollen and tender, and it makes every single part of him cramp with want. 

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Louis says, proud of the fact that his voice isn’t even shaking that much. Harry’s waist is slim between his knees but he’s so solid that Louis shivers and rolls them over, pulls him on top just to feel the weight of him. “Fuck. Harry.”

They still have their clothes on, which, absurdly, Louis is grateful for. He doesn’t think his heart could stand any more skin on skin than they’ve got, because it’s so much more than he’s ever had before; just the slide of Harry’s hands under his shirt makes him gasp and throw his head back, and Harry’s mouth on the thin skin of his throat makes him moan. 

He hisses when Harry sucks a kiss under his jaw, and worries at that sensitive patch of skin with his teeth until it begins to hurt. Louis’ hands find his hair again but he doesn’t know whether to keep him close or push him away; it stings, and he’s going to feel it for days, press his finger against the livid bruise in the morning and remember. 

“This what you wanted?” he manages, clutching at the back of Harry’s neck, rolling his hips up. “Wanted to mark me? Everyone else did.”

Harry makes a short, aborted noise, and Louis laughs. The walls are thin and Harry’s brought enough people home that Louis knows how much he mouths off in bed, how loud he gets, how _filthy_ , and the fact that Louis has him so overwhelmed he can’t even speak makes Louis giddy. He wants to see Harry’s face, the possessive furrow of his brow, but it’s so good just to feel him, too: his rough, uneven breaths, the heat of his skin, the bite of his teeth. He digs his fingernails in at Harry’s nape just to make him reach up and catch Louis’ hands and pin them down to the bed, squeeze his wrists hard enough to make him gasp. 

“Harder,” Louis says, “I won’t bruise that easily,” and Harry goes tense in a way that makes Louis’ toes curl, waiting for it. His eyes are dark when he lifts his head, pupils blown; Louis holds his breath and then loses it, in one single terrifying rush, when Harry drags his hands up and fits them palm to palm, threads their fingers together just gently, and clings. 

“Don’t talk,” he says, and his voice is shot, gone hoarse and deep, but Louis has lost his voice altogether, can only nod and close his eyes and strain up, try not to shake apart. They go from holding to clutching at each other, and for a long time the only sounds in the room are their panting breaths and the slow, easy give of their mouths, even when Louis spreads his legs and Harry fits in between and they roll their hips together, too much friction and not enough. 

They end up coming in their pants because they can’t bear to untangle their hands for long enough to get their clothes off and Louis laughs through his orgasm because that’s fucking absurd. Harry tries to kiss him quiet but that just makes him laugh harder, butterflies in his stomach off on a riot at the thought that this is a preview, a trailer for the rest of his life. 

That should probably scare him more than it does, but then it’s a bit silly to be afraid of something you’ve been waiting on for what feels like forever. 

“You do know,” he says, once he can make his voice work again, “that I’ve no longer got an income, right?” He cards his fingers through Harry’s sweaty curls and tugs to get his attention. “I mean, you seem to have the whole house thing planned out, apart from how you’ve not thought it through _at all._ ”

“Mmm,” Harry says, and Louis stares at the ceiling and grins, because he now knows firsthand how quiet and dopey Harry gets after sex. He’s too warm under Harry’s weight, sticky and uncomfortable, but Harry smells like cake and heat and Louis, and anyway, it’s Harry, so the scale is always going to be rigged.

“I expect you and Zayn are going to be all right now,” he muses. “Though—him, and Niall—have all of our friends been keeping secrets for you?” He raises his head just enough to see the curve of Harry’s cheek. “What will I uncover next? Is Liam going to be the mother of your child?”

“Nah,” Harry says, hoarse and slow, dropping his hands down to Louis’ waist, lower. His eyes are still closed, but his dimples pop when he squeezes Louis’ arse. “He hasn’t got the hips for it.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Louis says, but he’s laughing again, helplessly, and Harry blinks one eye open and grins at him like he knows Louis is gone, gone, gone.

* * *

Louis does eventually untangle himself from Harry, and by the time he gets around to checking his mobile, he has three unread messages from the three usual suspects.

_FINALLLLYYYYY_

_always wanted to be a bridesmaid_

_youre welcome :) aha x_

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://eleadore.tumblr.com/)! thanks for reading.


End file.
